Because you cannot walk with the holy, If you’re just a halfway decent man. I don’t pretend that I’m a mastermind With a genius marketing plan. I’m trying to tap into some wisdom, Even a little drop will do. I want to rid my heart of envy And cleanse my soul of rage Before I’m [...]
Crane Cavanaugh, the central character in Lucia Nevai’s novel Salvation, is the kind of character that will remind you to count your blessings; that as bad as things are they could be worse. Crane’s mother, a prostitute living with two former charlatan evangelists/revivalists, tried to end her life in the womb and fails to provide [...]
A couple of reviews that I found interesting this time from the NYTBR: –> David Frum takes to the pages of the NYTBR to review White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement by Allan J. Lichtman: For Lichtman, conservatism is less a body of ideas than a collection of unattractive impulses. No [...]
–> Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke Publishers Weekly Dave Robicheaux and his former partner, Clete Purcel, find trouble in western Montana in bestseller Burke’s fine 17th novel to feature the New Iberia, La., sheriff’s deputy (after Tin Roof Blowdown). When two security men for Texas oil millionaire Ridley Wellstone deliberately [...]
–> Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry Publishers Weekly McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) calls this “a book about my life with books.” He begins with his Texas childhood in an isolated, “totally bookless” ranch house. His life changed in 1942 when a cousin, off to enlist, gave McMurtry a box of 19 adventure books, initiating what [...]
Cover via Amazon The authors of this calmly argued and well sourced book, Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State, are not likely to appear on any of the cable gab fests any time soon despite the relevance of the subject matter. Their book lacks the hyperbole and controversy those shows [...]
There is a certain bittersweet aspect to reading Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater. It is the last book William F. Buckley wrote, or at least that was ready or publication – he was working on a book on Reagan when he passed, and at the same time to it looks back to what was in [...]
As regular readers will know, I occasionally dip into children’s and young adult fiction particularly fantasy. I find it is often imaginative and creative in a way that similar genres of “adult fiction” are not. And having been reading some more serious non-fiction, I decided to check out The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff. I [...]